


it's what you do to me

by paperclipbitch



Category: Eureka (TV)
Genre: Angst, Exes, F/M, Late Night Conversations, Pining, Pre-Series, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 03:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9473807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: "Sorry," Nathan says, "I'm just having aHey There Delilahmoment."“I literally have no idea what that means,” Allison says, like he knew she would.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [Title from _Hey There Delilah_ by Plain White T's] I'm doing a _Eureka_ rewatch because I need nice things in my life, and somehow instead of all the other things I want to write, I accidentally wrote this. Ah, Nathan and Allison, so complicated and angsty. I like to think that, much like Tony Stark, Nathan is all up on his pop culture, and this fic is set circa 2006, so. Ahem.

It’s four am; Allison’s phone rings and rings and _rings_. Nathan thinks briefly about Kevin, then remembers that once he’s asleep he’s pretty much out: it’s getting him there that takes the time. He waits for a voicemail, and there isn’t one, and he closes his eyes and counts the rings.

“It’s four in the morning, Nathan.” That’s Allison, his Allison, her _you’d better be the fuck on fire_ tone. 

“Time difference?” he suggests.

“Nice try,” she snips. 

Nathan sighs, because even irritated, it’s good to hear her. He hates that about himself, of course.

“Nathan.” Her tone has shifted; it’s softer, a little break in the middle. She won’t give him an inch because he already took his mile, but there’s something there that isn’t hostility anyway.

“Nothing,” he says, brushing it away, because getting what he wants doesn’t always feel like satisfaction after all, “sorry, I’m just having a _Hey There Delilah_ moment.”

He pictures her frown; he could have video called, of course, but he doesn’t want to see her like this, isn’t sure he wants her to see _him_ like this. “I literally have no idea what that means,” Allison says, like he knew she would. He plotted out this whole conversation before he picked up the phone, but he wanted to have it more than he didn’t want to have it, and now here they are, miles tangled around their wrists, a dozen slammed doors.

“It doesn’t matter,” Nathan says, before he says something else.

Allison’s sigh crackles like static. “When was the last time you slept,” she says, flat.

Nathan is sure that he used to think he’d be the best one at this, he’d totally win the break-up, slough the marriage off like so much dead skin. He’s Nathan Stark, a good landing is anything you can walk away from, right, he doesn’t have time for a cracked heart and something that was maybe doomed from the start.

“I don’t know,” Nathan replies, more honest than he wants to be, because Allie brings that out in him, drags that out in him.

He’s sitting under his desk, tie wrapped around his wrist, and the fluorescent lights are starting to hurt. He used to have a marriage to go home to; now, he doesn’t have anything. He can’t remember the last time he saw his apartment, bachelor pad neatly picked out of a catalogue, anything that meant anything left behind in Eureka. Nathan works in all kinds of tech, he’s great at blowing things up: you should see what he does to his bridges.

“DC’s going well, then.” There’s that bitter bite to Allison’s tone, and if Nathan wanted to be honest he could say that their marriage was crumbling and Allison’s just pissed because he hammered the final nail into the coffin instead of staying put and suffocating slowly – yeah, that’s a lot of metaphors – but he never wants to be honest, why start now, early hours of the morning, scotch in the bottom drawer of his desk.

“Never better,” he chirps, rubs a hand over his jaw, that beard he started growing after receiving his Nobel turning beyond something smart and groomed and adult into something he’ll probably be a little ashamed of later. He’s fine though; absolutely fine.

“I don’t know what you expected,” Allison says, and her tone is lower, angry and yet not; he pictures her, barefoot, sliding to sit on the carpet in the room they used to share. 

His office carpet is corporate, boring, and he and his wife have never made love on it, not once. 

“I expected this,” Nathan replies, sharper than he meant, self-preservation, perhaps, “exactly this. It’s all going exactly to plan.”

“Right,” Allison sighs. “And this moment of pop music inspired nostalgia is what, a shared hallucination?”

“I didn’t hear you google,” Nathan says, avoiding.

“You never do,” Allison replies, something curling amused in her tone; he wants to chase the corner of her mouth, the press of a dimple, slide his fingertips along them in familiarity, adoration. He doesn’t get to do that anymore, of course; and Allison hasn’t smiled like that at him in a long time.

“I notice all kinds of things about you,” he protests, stung, and then wonders if maybe that was her original intention, little fingers, wrapped around, that fucking adage.

“You used to,” she agrees. “Now you mostly notice that I’m here and you’re not, and maybe you’d have gone home hours ago if I was there too, but I bet you wouldn’t.”

“I always said I was married to my job,” Nathan protests, because he hates that tone on Allison, hates when she’s right about him more. He rose-tinted her spectacles when they met, because he reads _so well_ on paper, and he likes to pretend that that view never cracked, that Allison never peeled back all the awards and the fame and the kind of well-deserved ego to what lies underneath, and found it wanting. _Nathan’s_ always kind of found it wanting: why’d you think he achieves so damn much with his time?

“There was a time when you said you were married to me,” Allison reminds him. “And yet, hey, here I always am, the other woman.”

“You’re much prettier than science,” Nathan tells her, pours on the charm to caricature it; it’s a bad line, but he nearly pulls it off anyway, or maybe that’s 4 am speaking.

Allison laughs. “Well, you used to think that, anyway.”

“I still think that,” Nathan corrects her.

They fall silent; breaths on a phoneline. Nathan wants to say something; finds he has nothing else to say at all. Nothing he’ll say to Allison, not even exhausted and maybe a little out of his mind and having come this far already.

“Don’t do this again, Nathan,” Allison says at last. It’s not cold, hard, like it should be; it’s not a plea, either. He’d take either of those over this, anyway, Allie’s sad soft resigned request.

“I won’t,” he tells her.

“I know,” she replies.

They sit in their separate, conjoined silences for a little while longer; Nathan tells himself that he’ll hang up first.


End file.
